In a Kingdom Far Away
by Chevira Lowe
Summary: Being a hero doesn’t always mean you’ll get your happy ending. [Yondaimefic, oneshot]


In a Kingdom Far Away.

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Summary: Being a hero doesn't mean you'll get your happy ending. Yondaime-fic, one-shot

AN: I'm feeling sadistic. Does it show? Mwahah. Anyways. Major hugs to SNA and Kimi no Vanilla, both who helped me with the ending of this damnable ficcage. KnV also gets a shout-out for coming up with the title. Loves, hon.

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There is a maze in his mind, and at the epicenter there is a Beast. When it walks, the ground trembles at its feet and currents shimmer in the air like gossamer ghosts and blood runs red and free from open veins to splash across a catwalk of crimson. Thick, cloying smells like rotting flesh and feces rise with the sun and it sinks into his skin and stains his soul. Corded banners dipped in candy-apple red sweep the corridors, and eyes glitter from the shadows, passing judgment while withholding salvation.

It searches for him, grinding his name out between its sharp teeth and on a wave of hot breath like carrion, putrescence dripping from its claws as it digs them into rivulets of his soft, weak mind. If it finds him, it will kill him. He can't remember why it's important not to be caught. So he runs. Runs and runs and runs and when he is exhausted and when sweat stains his shirt and shorts and sandals, he pauses for a moment of respite, a brief catnap curled in an alcove where he hopes and prays that the Beast will not find him. He steals precious, rare minutes to himself and hoards them like a miser, mouth splitting in an uncanny, unearthly, broken-toothed grin as he teeters on the precipice of sanity.

He courts death and sin, arms linked as with the destiny he's fought to refute, and yet they do not guard him as comrades should be guarded. They sit and they sneer and they slither about at his feet and trip him when he is not keeping a tight rein on their every move. They nuzzle at his knees like mangy hounds and tear chunks from his flesh when he cannot see.

He wonders if the Beast smells his blood, and cannot sense if it draws nigh or away.

When he falls, he falls hard and fast, and the brittle fingernails that snap against the floor sound like the ignition of a match, and his bloodied fingertips paint ethereal murals on the white-washed floors as he tries to regain his feet. His vision hazes to red and soon it is all he can see. Then, when he comes face to face with a nightmare, he has time to think one horrible, hopeful thought before a scream tears from his throat and he is lost again in the maze.

The Beast has no name.

* * *

Here, he is not the Yondaime Hokage. He is prey, pleasure, pain. He is a passing amusement to an immortal lordling, a broken clay horse, a tattered straw doll. A spinning top painted in a child's hand, forever caught in crystalline centrifugal motion. He does not remember that he is a shinobi or that he was a sensei or that he has a child. He sees nothing, knows nothing. Sometimes, the darkness is unbearable and some carnal corner of his mind conjures a spell and a spark to send it away. But fire is dangerous. It draws the Beast. It illuminates illustrations on the walls, scenes of a figure falling from the sun and from a hero lashed to a rock, but they still draw the Beast.

Fire keeps the shadows of insanity at bay, and yet, _it draws the Beast. _

So it happens that he forgets the warmth of fire and the smell of sunshine. He forgets what he looks like, so that when he catches his reflection in one of the grand mirrors adorning one of the grand halls, he sees a monster.

But he has not forgotten his strength.

The Beast searches and tries to extinguish the final fighting flame that refuses to bow or bend or break within him. It searches and howls its frustration to a sky it cannot see, and he waits, panting, slouched against a wall that's slick as mud and hard as steel and silver, silver like the underbelly of a fish as it twists itself into the air from the ocean's embrace.

When he can, he stands. When he cannot run, he walks, and when he cannot walk, sometimes he crawls. He cannot stop moving.

And he will not surrender.

* * *

The beast feeds on his memories, and he gives it what he can spare. Gone are the memories of he and his team sharing tears and smiles and secrets. Gone is the reminiscence of pride as his son took a deep breath and squalled in a perfectly-formed, endearingly noisy voice. Gone is the sweet soft laughter of his lover.

He has three faces in his mind, hovering out of his reach, and yet he does not know what they should mean to him. Perfect and picture-still, his last and only treasure. One isn't even a face, not really, because it's swathed in dark cloth and all he can see are eyes, eyes like the ones that watch him but not, because one is black and one is red and together they form crimson. One seems feminine, with wide eyes and a small mouth that curls up in laughter, stripes on her face like a fighting tiger. Another is grinning, some foreign object draped across his forehead that glints in the light.

He has two sensations in his mind, and yet he does not know what they should mean to him. Fragile and tender, the first is of calloused fingers and soft lips, a scimitar sliver of a smile mirrored in darkness. The second is of a small, sturdy hand wrapped around one of his fingers.

He has one voice in his mind, and yet he doesn't know what it should mean to him. It's a strong voice bearing simple words; words mean something, words that _matter. _

He wonders if this is all that he has left of his important people.

And then he runs.

* * *

Games are often unfair, and he accepts that the scales are not tipped in his favor. But he thinks it cruel, sometimes, to let him live on like this, a flame and a shadow of his former self, a shell and a story, a legend that cannot lie down and die. He traverses the halls, trails his fingers across tapestries, and his fingers come away wetted anew with blood, bone poking out beyond the flesh like a newborn bird trying to free itself from its shell. Occasionally, the urge to find his tormenter and to beg for oblivion is as all-encompassing as the maze itself. He waits and wants for death.

But he has not given up. He never will. He does not know it, but he paid in the cold hard currency of his soul to save the lives of people he'd never met. An inkling of that sacrificial soldier tells him that no matter what, he must fight.

There is a maze in his mind and at the epicenter there is Beast that has no name.

But if it catches him, he knows it will become death, and so he names it. He runs from it and it searches for him and time spins on like a seamstress.

* * *

Patterns of fire blaze like a waltz, twisting, turning, dipping and bowing to partners unseen but felt, searing heat to searing heat and cherry-red lips to cherry-red lips. Flames writhe around a still body and carry it to the sky on wings of dove-gray ash. Ribbons of people stand at attention, murders of multi-colored crows waiting in line according to rank and file and pecking order. Some cry noisily and wipe their noses on their sleeves or the backs of their hands. Some stand rigid and tall, their jaws clenched, their treacherous tongues caged behind their teeth to discourage screams of grief. Some look up or down or away.

Some stare at the funeral pyre and pray.

They remain, ruffled and fluttering in an onslaught of rain, rain that evaporates if it nears the heat of the fire. The little flames tickle and trickle and lap greedily at what remains, bones and a white-hot strip of metal emblazoned with a leaf. Eerie shadows flirt with the hollows of the skull before it crumbles. Bodies may be identifiable, but skeletons are anonymous. The thing on the pyre is no longer a man but a specter, belonging body and soul to the essence of eternity.

When the last ember is dully orange, the sun is come and the gathered have gone, a boy fishes that same charred metallic scrap from the midst of snowy, swirling ash and stares at it a moment with mismatched eyes before walking away, shoulders trembling but head held high, hand closed tightly around the legacy of the Leaf. It was hot enough to burn him, but the boy would not let it go.

* * *

He will not let go of the last shreds of what he recognizes as humanity, because they are all that keep him from needingwanting_yearning _to die. Hauntingly, hungrily, he hears the Beast in the distance as it calls for his blood, roaring its challenge without cause or care. The resources that remain he has tapped and tapped again, no fitful sleep can save him now.

He chooses a room, because someone, sometime told him that if he must fight, fight on his own turf and terms. The roof is high, higher than a bird's flight, and he thinks he catches a glimpse of the stars above and beyond his grasp, burning hotly like something he only just recalls. The walls are gray, and there is a rich red carpet at his feet.

For the first time in fifteen years, he takes an unguarded breath, makes an unguarded smile, holds his arms out in an unguarded embrace of life and love and is at peace.

When the Beast finds him, he is ready.

And the Fourth Hokage makes his final stand.


End file.
